Deploying multiple 3rd party updates at the same time

[SMR1]

We're testing out the patching for our Mac's. I created policies for a few of application updates and scheduled the apps using the client-side limitation and set them all for the same time. 2 out of the 3 installed and the 3rd one failed, so I'm curious if I need to stager the times, so each application has to time to install so the others don't interfere. The one that fails, worked after I resent it.

[sdagley]

@SMR1 What does the policy log show for the one that failed when initially being run? While you may have had all 3 policies scheduled to run at the same time, they would not have run simultaneously, but would have been triggered in sequence based on the policy names.

[SMR1]

Sorry for the late response. I jumped the gun and hit flush on, so I didn't capture the message. I did another test and the updates seem hit and miss. I've used client-side and server-side. For example, we had about 10 devices that needed the chrome update. I setup the policy on the 28th and set the server-side time for 6pm. That night and in to the morning 9 updated. The last device is used daily, but still has not updated Chrome. 

[SMR1]

I just did another deployment last night to 34 devices that had multiple updates. I set client-side to not deploy from 5a-9pm local time and informed the users to leave their devices on. Some of the updates went out, but I think the devices went to sleep and that's why only some of the updates went through. Looks like I'll have to have the updates start sooner or make the window smaller. They want us to get away from a lot of user interaction, but I don't think that is possible. 

[sdagley]

@SMR1 If you send the following command it will prevent a Mac from going into sleep mode while it's plugged in:

/usr/bin/pmset -c sleep 0

If you do that before you start your updates your Macs should stay awake until they complete. 

To reverse that change, and have the Mac go into sleep mode when the display turns off, send this command:

/usr/bin/pmset -c sleep 1

[SMR1]

Since we're testing and trying to figure out the patching, we just used server-side and had it activate yesterday at 10pm EST. We also created one smart group, that included the 7 smart groups created for devices missing the specific software update, so we only have one smart group to work with, but from the looks of it, that doesn't really work. We have devices that said it completed, but they're still missing updates.